All too often we see brands and companies packing their captions full of hashtags – regardless of the platform, and with little consideration for what is actually considered the optimum hashtag activity.
Well, spoiler alert, hashtag stuffing can actually be bad for the visibility and success of your posts.
There is in fact a correct way to use hashtags on social media, and it all starts with the platform you are using.
The Discover tool on Instagram is super useful for getting your content in the discovery feed of those who regularly search for content around your industry or area – and this is determined using the hashtags you share. Here are our top tips to using #Hashtags effectively on Instagram…
1. We have already encouraged you to sign up for a business profile if you are a company or brand operating on Instagram. And now it’s time to use those analytics and insights that having a business profile give you access to. Select one of your posts, go to Insights, and see how many impressions you got from each hashtag to rate its success.
2. Look at what your competitors are using for their hashtags. (Then make yours more targeted, as branded as possible, and better!)
3. Don’t post the same hashtags on every post. It can be super appealing to just copy and paste, but remember that if you stuff every post with the same content, Instagram’s algorithm will penalise you for spam content and your posts won’t show up in as many discovery feeds.
